MUMBAI: Some 70 years ago, CP Krishnan Nair believed his destiny was to become a monk.

Nair and one Balakrishna Menon, both of whom served in the Indian National Army, made a visit to Sivananda Saraswati, a spiritual teacher and proponent of yoga and Vedanta, with the sole motive of joining his ashram. The yogi held Menon's hand as a gesture of acceptance but asked Nair to go back to the regular world and work. "The guru told me my path is that of a karmayogi (one who achieves perfection via action)." Nair went back, married Leela, the daughter of a handloom owner in Kannur in North Kerala, and eventually started a garment export business. Menon, for his part, went on to chart his own spiritual path, transforming into Swami Chinmayananda and along with his devotees formed the Chinmaya Mission to take Vedanta to the world. At 92, Nair's journey as a karmayogi is still incomplete. He may have retired as chairman of the Leela Group of Hotels earlier this month - with eldest son Vivek taking over as CMD and Dinesh as co-chairman & MD of the group - but Nair isn't quite walking into the sunset. He says he still has unfinished tasks - such as overseeing the opening of six new hotels in Agra, Jaipur, Ashtamudi in Kerala, Bangalore and Noida. His role in these ventures: "I will make them, run them and manage them," says the 'captain' as he fondly addressed by friends. He does, however, add that "wife Leela has asked me not to set up any more hotels and trouble the kids. But their hands are also full now." Their hands are not full with just expansion plans. For the nine months ended December 2012, Hotel Leela Venture, the listed company, posted a loss of 291 crore, of which 282 crore is just interest cost. The group's total debt is about of 4,300 crore. The good captain, however, is hardly fazed. The debt is within manageable limits, he asserts, and will be reduced by selling non-core assets such as IT business parks and land parcels and by diluting stakes in existing properties. And a new, asset-light strategy is being put in place: to enter into management contracts that will bring in revenues with minimal investments. What also keeps Nair stress-free is his daily routine of ayurvedic massages and a game of volleyball. And the spirit to battle still burns bright. "Napolean had the guts to take his army to Russia; you can't win a war, or become an empire unless one does something like this," says the former army man. Nair may be well into his 90s, but he has been a hotelier for only just 27 years of his life. His first hotel, Hotel Leela in Mumbai, came up in the mid-80s, almost three decades after a stay at a Kempinsky hotel in Budapest opened his eyes to the opportunity of a luxury hotel chain in India. Nair continues to dream. "I want to explore tourism in Bhutan and Sikkim as they are protected areas. I have a proposal to manage a property in Dubai," he says. His dreams go beyond hospitality. One of the more cherished and ambitious ones is to see new, hitech cities mushrooming all over the country. And a plan close to his heart is to build one such city in his home district of Kannur. Nair reckons the country's destiny would have been totally different if the founding fathers of the country had managed to connect the rivers in India. "We have lost an opportunity to become equal to China. And we could have made a huge difference if education for every child had been made compulsory. A 100 IITs and an equal number of IIMs would have helped India forge ahead of China."